Horace Guy Lankester HAYNES (1877-1955)

Horace Guy Lankester Haynes (1877-1955), known as Guy, was the son of Horace and Lucy Haynes who were friends of Julius and Eugénie Sladden; he was of a similar age to Jack Sladden.

Guy Haynes was born at Evesham on 18th June 1877, the eldest of five children of Horace Eyre Haynes, a surgeon and general practitioner, and his wife, Lucy Marion (née Jones).  He was baptized at Acton (where his mother was from) on 18th August 1877.

Guy was educated at Epsom College and Downing College, Cambridge, where he was an exhibitioner.  At the time of the 1901 census, Guy was a medical student in London, boarding at 2 Margaretta Terrace, Chelsea.  He went on to Westminster Hospital, qualifying in 1903.  There followed a period at the Children’s Hospital, Shadwell, and was then in general practice at Marksfield, Leicestershire, from 1908 until the outbreak of war in 1914.  He served first in the 84th Field Ambulance and later commanded with great distinction the 2/2 London Field Ambulance, 56th Division, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Guy married Margaret Craske in 1908 in Rochester, Kent.  They had four sons:  William Noel Lankester (1911-1991), Thomas Lankester (1916), John Lankester (1920), Frank Lankester (1923-1944).  The Haynes family settled in Brentwood in 1920.  For 25 years he was medical superintendent of Littleton Hall, the private mental home which had been started by his father.

Guy died at Brentwood on 1st April 1955, aged 77.  In his obituary in the British Medical Journal of 21st May 1955 it was written:  “Colonel Haynes was a quiet, retiring man, difficult to know well, and slow to make friends.  To those who had his friendship he was a delightful companion, full of reminiscences, with a puckish sense of humour.”  This perhaps explains why Ethel, in a letter of February 1906, found conversation with Guy difficult.